Interesting thread. I don’t think I will add much other than to agree with others who have said that it is hard to call a ‘best’ between most of those mentioned.
Personally, over the years I have used Bradbury, Fusion, Laver, Charlie French, Warsop, Newbery, Woodstock (all pre-2011) and more recently (post-2015) Chase, Alfred, Affinity, B3 and H4L. I would say in retrospect that they all took a while to ‘open up’ before playing really well. The exceptions would probably be the Woodstock that seemed to fly from the off but I don’t think lasted a season and Aldred/Affinity which were too heavy for me to get on with (I think both were of the “it’s the pickup not deadweight that counts” school of thought which sounds great but I’m not convinced by from experience).